Date:         Mon, 05 Dec 94 22:55:14 CST
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Joel Walker <JWALKER@ua1vm.ua.edu>
Subject:      Re: Tire size question

On Mon, 5 Dec 94 21:17:49 CST David Carment said:
>Joel: Thanks :) - so does this mean that I can inflate my mpg figures by
>2.3%?  Just

well ... :) it WILL mess up your odometer, too. ;)

>got back from a 600 mile trip and noticed that cruising above 60mph and
>the mpg drops dramatically, below 60 and it goes back up to 21mpg. Now
>that the rings have finally "settled"; the engine seems to run well above
>65 except for going up big hills and against the wind... DC --

that sounds like mine, but about 5-8 mph lower. my 88 gets pretty good mpg
up to about 3800 rpm, then after than the mpg drops off really rapidly.
what with the extra weight of the camper, that 5-8 mph speed difference
would probably be about right ... what with the additional difference in the
torque/hp of our respective engines. not sure how much that little extra
frontal cross-section of the camper would affect things.

what i finally wound up doing was settling into a "comfortable" rpm, instead
of speed ... 3800 rpm works out to about 63 mph (according to my little
driving computer). and that's enough momentum/torque to get up most hills.
4000 rpm is faster and keeps up with most of the traffic, but the engine
sounds like it's straining a bit. 3600 rpm is a bit slow and doesn't go up
the hills as well. well, anyway, that's the way i interpret what my bus does.
:)
joel